Obama’s UN Envoy Nominee Power Pledges to Defend Israel

July 18 (Bloomberg) -- Samantha Power, President Barack
Obama’s nominee for ambassador to the United Nations, disavowed
her decade-old critiques of American foreign policy and promised
to root out anti-Israel “bias” at the international body.

Power said she will “work tirelessly to defend” Israel in
an organization where many countries don’t recognize it, and to
lobby for the Jewish state to have a rotating seat on the
Security Council for the first time.

“The UN must be fair,” Power told the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee at her confirmation hearing yesterday. She
criticized the organization’s human rights council for making
Israel a recurring item on its agenda, rather than nations such
as North Korea, Iran or Sudan.

“Israel’s legitimacy should be beyond dispute, and its
security must be beyond doubt,” Power said. She blamed anti-Israel attitudes at the UN on the fact that fewer than half of
its members are democratic nations.

For those states, “it helps to have a diversion,” she
said. “It helps to scapegoat other countries.”

During almost two hours of questioning, she sought to allay
concerns about certain comments she’d made as a journalist and
academic, and told critics of the UN that she would put U.S.
national interests first. She also said she’d work to rein in
corruption and waste and reduce spending at the world body.

‘Positive Force’

Senators from both parties said they expect Power to be
confirmed. Saying he is “thankful that you’re going to be in
this position very soon,” Tennessee Senator Bob Corker, the
committee’s top Republican, predicted she will be “a
significant and positive force at the United Nations.”

Power, 42, a human-rights advocate and former journalist,
took a leave from Harvard University’s Carr Center for Human
Rights Policy to work as a foreign policy adviser in Obama’s
Senate office. She joined his 2008 presidential campaign and
served on his National Security Council until earlier this year.

She was among the advisers who persuaded the president to
support a no-fly zone and UN military intervention to stop the
slaughter of rebels by Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi in 2011.

Power hewed to the administration’s policy line on the war
in Syria, the nuclear dispute with Iran and the upheaval in
Egypt. Asked whether the U.S. should take unilateral military
action if the UN won’t act against slaughter overseas, she
referred to “many tools in the toolbox,” including sanctions,
embargoes, peacekeepers and other responses.

“There’s no one-size-fits-all solution,” she said,
telling lawmakers that U.S. national interests must be the
preeminent consideration in any decision to use force.

History’s Judgment

Power called the Security Council’s failure to act
decisively to halt the Syrian civil war a “disgrace that
history will judge harshly.” She acknowledged that it’s
unlikely the U.S. will be able to persuade Russia to change its
position on Syria anytime soon.

Power won a Pulitzer Prize for “A Problem From Hell:
America and the Age of Genocide,” a 2002 book about U.S. policy
in the face of the slaughter of people in Bosnia and Rwanda.

A native of Ireland who immigrated to the U.S. as a child
with her parents, Power was introduced to the committee by the
two Republican senators who represent her home state of Georgia,
Saxby Chambliss and Johnny Isakson.

Disavows Statements

Under questioning by Republican Senators Marco Rubio of
Florida and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, Power recanted a 2002
interview in which, when asked how her brand of liberal
intervention might be applied to the Arab-Israeli conflict, she
advocated a “mammoth” protection force that might alienate “a
domestic constituency of tremendous” import. Power said she
gave a “rambling and very remarkably incoherent response to a
hypothetical question that I never should have answered.”

Power also disavowed the gist of a 2003 article in which
she called for the federal government to acknowledge past
“crimes committed, sponsored or permitted by the United
States.” Asked several times to specify crimes for which she
wanted the U.S. to atone, Power responded by saying she “would
never apologize for America,” which she called “the greatest
country on Earth.”

Asked by Johnson if her views had changed, Power said she
would defend U.S. sovereignty as a paramount interest. “Serving
in the executive branch is very different than sounding off from
an academic perch,” Power said.

McCain’s Praise

Arizona Republican Senator John McCain, who last year was
among the lawmakers who blocked then-UN envoy Susan Rice from
being nominated as secretary of state, praised Power’s
statements on Syria and her view that the U.S. should act to
stop humanitarian crises and genocide.

There was no indication that Republicans would seek to
derail Power’s confirmation.

Among Power’s invited guests in the hearing room was Rabbi
Shmuley Boteach, a writer and radio host who two years ago
criticized Power’s views on Israel. Power -- whose husband,
Harvard University legal scholar and Bloomberg View columnist
Cass Sunstein, is Jewish -- invited Boteach to the White House
to explain her views and won him over. Boteach has spoken on her
behalf to members of the Jewish community.

After the hearing, Boteach accompanied Power, her Irish-born parents and a small group of family, friends and
administration officials to celebrate at The Dubliner, an Irish
pub on Capitol Hill.